High Seas Drifter (Cruise Confidential 4)

by Brian David Bruns

  I sat beside Natalie and, on the other side, Cosmina—as always, whether I liked it or not. I secretly wished Faye had been present, just to keep Cosmina good and riled. Turns out that was not necessary. After the pizzas arrived, so, too, did Eddie's girlfriend Susie.

  "What the hell, Eddie?" she demanded before even stepping into the light. Even had we not recognized the voice, Eddie's flinch was a dead giveaway.

  "I told you I was going out to dinner," Eddie protested, rising from his chair. He snagged another from a neighboring table and squeezed it next to his own. "You said you didn't want to come."

  "Not with everybody, you didn't!" she accused.

  "You thought I would leave you in the cabin to tender into port alone?"

  "I can see how wanted I am," she fumed, plopping down, arms folded firmly beneath her breasts. Eddie looked appropriately chagrined and said nothing further.

  "Eddie was just telling us the funniest story," Cosmina enthusiastically lied to Susie. "He's sooo funny when he's happy."

  "I'm sure," Susie replied flatly.

  Eddie, not knowing what to do, meekly sipped his wine in silence. Halfway through the action, however, he gave a sigh and rose. "All right," he said to Susie. "Let's go."

  "But the pizza just got here!" I protested. "We have plenty for everyone."

  Alas, our arguments stood little chance of softening Susie's icy demeanor. But Eddie took it all in stride, generously reassuring us, "It's okay. I'll catch you guys next time."

  They strode down the alley, into darkness. We returned our attention to the pizza, but something felt wrong. As if the setting weren't creepy enough, from the darkness emanated a heavy breathing.

  "Okay, that's not funny!" Janie shouted to the dark. "Hey, asshole! You can cut it out."

  A huffing and puffing sounded just outside the light, directly behind Natalie. With startling suddenness a heavy hand fell upon the back of her chair.

  "Jesus, Rick!" Natalie cried, jumping up. "I thought you were a serial killer!"

  Into the light slouched a solid man with thick shoulders and slight paunch. His short hair was slicked forward with sweat, and he looked ready to pass out. Yet while still wheezing he gamely pawed at her shoulders. "Up, woman," he growled, "Can't you see I'm dying here?"

  Natalie relinquished her chair to the newcomer, this Rick. He was a sorry sight, with sweat soaking strange patterns into his turquoise Wind Surf polo shirt. It was an amusing pairing with the gold hoop he wore in his ear. Rather than a pirate, he was more like the Big Bad Wolf: huffing and puffing. Still, he managed to down Natalie's beer in record time.

  "Fine," Natalie harrumphed. "I'll get my own chair. Have you guys met Rick? He's the new spa manager."

  "Not for bloody long!" Rick complained. "Nobody told me I'd be running a bloody haunted spa!"

  "If you're trying to scare us," Janie chided, "You can stop. This place is scary enough."

  Rick glanced around, apparently noticing the macabre surroundings for the first time. With a solemn nod he said, "Fair dinkum. Bloody ghosts should hang here, not at my bloody spa!"

  "All right," I told him, "You've got us hooked. I love ghost stories."

  Rick shook his head as if to clear it of cobwebs, or perhaps the memory. After a swig of beer and a sigh, he narrated, "I saw it last night, too. I wasn't sure then. I'd heard Camilla's stupid story, but thought she was a couple bangers short of a barbie."

  "She's new, so be nice!" Natalie chided. "Besides, I've seen weird things, too."

  "And Natalie's seen things, too," Rick repeated.

  The spa was down by the waterline of Wind Surf, back near the marina. At night it was a very quiet, very lonely place. Strange that such a small ship utilizing every cubic inch of guest space had locations that felt... abandoned. There were cabins nearby and people coming and going from the spa, to be sure, but something about the spa's location did feel somehow different.

  "I've noticed things moving behind the desk," Rick said. "But it's hard to tell when bloody staplers move on their own when you have four employees. But you know the melon slices we keep in the urn of drinking water? I heard a gurgle or something and looked up in their direction. In the blink of an eye—in the blink of a bloody eye—they vanished! Then—splat! Right in front of me, right in the middle of the desk, the melons reappeared. All the bloody things. Soaked my ledger and all my paperwork and everything."

  "Oh my God!" Natalie gasped, clapping her hands over her mouth. Nails clicked. "What did you do?"

  "What'd I do? I cleaned it up, you cow. What'd you think I'd do? Bloody weird, if you ask me, but—I don't know—somehow not real enough to worry over. That was yesterday. I'd only been aboard two days, so I thought it was just a ragging or some other prank on the new guy. Don't ask me how they'd bloody pull it off. But tonight was different. I was doing paperwork after we closed. A guest walked right past me."

  "A ghost?" Janie gasped, enrapt.

  "A guest, mate," Rick clarified, looking slightly miffed that she had stolen his thunder. "A bloody guest. I saw her clearly as she passed. Middle-aged, long brown hair, and a T-shirt that made her look chunky. I told her we're closed for the night, but she just walked through the spa and into Natalie's massage room. I followed right behind her, calling out. I was cranky, actually, because I've had a bad time with stupid passengers complaining all bloody day. I was going to give this lady a piece of my mind. When I got to Natalie's room I flipped the light switch on... and nobody was there!"

  "I'm switching rooms with Camilla," Natalie firmly declared.

  "I don't believe it!" Mel declared firmly. "You're just trying to scare us."

  "Yeah, Rick," Natalie said, giving her manager an accusing slug on the arm.

  "We live with many spirits in my culture," Yoyo added. "They are everywhere."

  "Oh, oui,” Fabrice agreed. "On Wind Surf, too. Zere ees more zan one ghost aboard."

  All eyes swiveled to the petite Frenchman. He smiled gamely.

  "I 'aven't seen eet zis contract," he explained cheerfully in his muddled accent. "But my last contract I saw eet two or tree times, just outside my office."

  "Your office is next to my office!" Cosmina blurted, shocked.

  "Oui," Fabrice agreed cheerily. I leaned in, anticipating his thick accent. I focused heavily on his words, because I wasn't about to miss any of this story!

  "In ze allway. Actually right outside ze door to ze pursair's offeece, dead-centair of ze ship. Ah ha—dead-centair—I just got that! I saw ze shadowy outline of a man... but only from ze waist up! I could not see 'iz face, but only a meest. I'm not sure why I even say he was a man, but eet felt like eet. Each time I looked up at 'im, 'ee just faded eento ze dark. Divina—you know ze Filipina pursair?—she saw 'im, too. She was on an errand for more papier. She was een an hurree and ran out of 'air office carrying a load and ran into ze phantom. She screamed, thinking she 'ad run eento an offisair. She saw 'ee was caucasian and of average 'ight, but no more. She couldn't even remember if she saw 'iz legs or not.

  "But she saw 'iz face clearly," Fabrice narrated. "Because eet was daylight, and Divina's office 'as a window. Eet was bright. Ee looked as solid as yoo and me, and she met 'iz gaze. 'Ee looked as surprised as her! But zere was somezing else as well. A sense of 'opelessness. Very gloomy, very sad. Zees I understand. Though I 'aven't seen ze phantom zees contract yet, I 'ave felt 'iz presence. Sometimes when I'm working late I will feel someone approaching. I'll look up, but no one ees zere. Even zough I don't see anyone, I can feel 'im watching. Just like I do 'ere."

  "Stop it!" Janie snapped. She was definitely getting into the spirit of the conversation. Telling ghost stories over red wine in Dracula's castle was sure to evoke some powerful impressions.

  "Bloody hell," Rick concluded. "The lady I saw looked just like another fat housewife. But seeing only half a man...? I'd get the hell out of there. In fact, I did get the hell out of there. Had to run to catch the last tender. Guess I'm out of shape. After ten bloody
years in the British Army, I didn't plan to ever run again!"

  "The British Army? Your accent is Australian," Cosmina said, suddenly intrigued. She had been distinctly ignoring the ghost stories, but now heard something pertaining to her interests. She sidled seductively closer—elbowing me out of the way—and huskily asked, "Tell me about... England."

  Rick gave her a scrutinizing look, then leaned in. His demeanor shifted from panting and goofy to smooth. "What would you like to know?"

  Cosmina leaned across even further, stabbing an elbow in my gut to do so. The pain was a small price to pay for her switching targets.

  "I want it all," she breathed seductively, as if they weren't surrounded by half a dozen others with raised brows. Yoyo, in particular, watched with open fascination. "Everything you've got. I want—"

  An awkward rumble rose from beneath the table, followed by a liquid churning and bubbling, then finally a caustic odor. Cosmina's eyes widened in horror. In a flash she was gone from the table. It happened so fast we were all left as wide-eyed as Yoyo.

  Natalie finally broke the silence. Clicking her claw-like nails together, she observed, "Rick, you sure got a way with women."

  4

  I had never before had such a night on ships, with so much interdisciplinary support, even reliance. While success usually involved relationships, such were very hard to come by at sea; people came and went on the big ships by the dozens every single cruise. Once again I was struck by how not big this ship was. For the first time, this did not bother me. In fact, for the first time I was downright pleased by it. I was struck by the sudden desire to make Wind Surf a home as long as I could. I had never felt that way about a ship before, beyond the fundamental fact that longer tenure meant more job security. Yes, for the first time I 'got it'. I was, indeed, a member of the family.

  Oh, sailors were all a member of an extended family. We were part of a club that the outside didn't understand and never could. Our experiences connected us and we supported each other, even when we hated each other. The life gets in your blood, kind of like being in the military or the police force—minus the danger, of course. But this was different. This wasn't a small town vibe, where everybody knew everybody's secrets simply because of proximity. This was intimacy, this was family.

  The cast was nearly complete, the family—which made my time on Wind Surf the best of all my career—nearly whole. Over the ensuing months I would get to know these players and their machinations intimately, officers and crew alike. Before my eyes some would grow not just professionally, but emotionally, dependent upon each other. Others would soon grow to loathe each other. Such chiaroscuro of light and dark defined my role as well. For on Wind Surf I made friends for life, loyal even after ships. I also made enemies—one in particular—whose duplicity would hound me even after returning to land life.

  You can choose your friends, but you can't choose your family.

  Chapter 9. Pompeii, Italy

  1

  The train, not yet moving, shimmied on its track, shuddering from a close call by a passing neighbor. The offender was on a separate track, of course, but with Italian driving you just never know. Fog left over from a passing shower steamed the windows, obscuring the view out across the Bay of Naples. A shame, that, for the cliff-top city of Sorrento offered an unparalleled overlook at one of the world's most celebrated World Heritage Sites.

  Tickets in hand, the four of us found seats facing each other and sat down; Natalie beside Rick, Janie by me. Literally the very second her bottom touched the bench, Natalie piped, "Okay, I'm bored."

  "That makes two of us, Natalie," Rick groused, saying her name with a mocking emphasis: 'NATlee'. "I wanted to go to a bar. You've really let me down here."

  "You're really not curious to see this?" I asked Rick, surprised.

  "Rather see the inside of a bar, mate," he answered, absently tugging on the small gold hoop in his ear.

  "That makes two of us," Natalie agreed.

  Such support did not please Rick, but rather incensed him. He snapped, "You're the one who suggested this stupid field trip! You're supposed to be my drinking partner."

  "That's because nobody told me it takes an hour twenty to get there," Natalie whined.

  "Good!" Janie said with obvious relief. "I need to get away for awhile. Francois' all up in my shit about goals. He called me into his office twice last cruise! Sometimes I think he forgets the shops are closed while in port, and we're always in port."

  Natalie snorted. "You're lucky! You get to see the ports. The spa's open all the time, so I have to work most ports."

  "I don't want to think about it," Janie said. She patted Natalie on the knees and said, "Come on. Let's make a cheer."

  "Do I look like a cheerleader to you?" the massive brunette grumbled. "I was bigger than half the team."

  Brushing aside Natalie's smart replies, Janie clapped her hands in the air and began chanting.

  "Explosive! Dynamic! Sure to pass the test—

  We explode with spirit, and eliminate the rest!"

  In unison, the entire train turned to stare at Janie. Rick moaned, "Does this train have a bar?"

  We were on our way to visit the fabled city of Pompeii, doomed by the most famous volcanic eruption of them all. In the year 79 A.D., Mt. Vesuvius erupted and buried the thriving city of Pompeii in a flood of ash. Though sheer hell and searing death for the inhabitants, the fine ash proved most gentle to the city itself. Smothered beneath the protective blanket of volcanic debris, Pompeii remained safely preserved through the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, through the Dark Ages, through the Renaissance. Only when the Industrial Revolution approached did the ash give up its prize.

  Now the city stands open and inviting, as if ready to once again house all 20,000 ghosts of the fallen. Street after street after street, all there. The houses, the markets, arenas, brothels, all there. The ash made a particularly effective preservative, leaving bodies where slain and household goods where abandoned. Archeologists even found unbroken jars of fruit preserves and loaves of bread! That an explosion one hundred thousand times more powerful than the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima could leave so much for posterity was incredible. So, too, were the numbers of tourists. Two and a half million people from all over the planet flocked to the site every year, hoping for a glimpse, a taste, of what the Roman world was like. They flew from hundreds of nations across thousands of miles.

  Natalie couldn't make it an hour.

  "Hey, sandwich lady!" she cried, flagging down an elderly woman offering snacks. Natalie rose to her full six foot two-inch height and jumped around, meter-long hair whirling in a black arc. As if that weren't enough to arrest attention, she wore a cut off pink top over a lime green bra. Her long nails were bright blue, as was the heavy ring of liner around her eyes and, for that matter, her plastic sandals. Decorating her front tooth was a diamond. Though archeology bound, Indiana Jones she looked not.

  Soon Natalie was unwrapping a baguette piled with cold cuts. And complaining.

  "This looks awful," she muttered, pulling the poor, wretched sandwich apart. She used the top half of bread to scrape off as much mayonnaise as possible, which she then discarded. She downed the sliced cheese in wolfish fashion, then proceeded to do... something... to the salami. Holding in her open palm the slices of meat, she began excising the little chunks of fat with surgical precision. A two-inch fingernail removed the fat like a scalpel, but was unable to smear it onto the waxed paper. Instead she had to use her palm, which soon mushroomed with smudges of white grease. The operation was both mesmerizing and revolting.

  "You are so bizarre," Rick marveled.

  "Biglietti," a small, foreign voice called from the aisle. We looked up to see the train's conductor holding out his hand. The Italian wore a crisp blue uniform and snappy hat, but his posture was wrinkled with boredom. That changed when he laid eyes upon Janie. She was a cute and solid woman, despite a year of beer having taken its toll on her once athletic b
ody. An extra layer around her middle indicated beer as surely as it would on any man. Thickly muscled thighs had softened considerably along their way into post-high school reality. But ever enthusiastic Janie didn't mind because now her boobs were bigger. The conductor obviously concurred, for despite four arms flapping with tickets, he saw only Janie's breast-bulging T-shirt.

  But duty soon took precedence. He frowned at our tickets and launched into a long and irate narrative. Recognizing that none of us understood him, he switched from Italian to English.

  "You no validate ticket," he said sternly. "You must validate ticket or be fined."

  "Fined?" Rick roared. "We bought your bloody tickets, didn't we? Who cares if we validated them? You can see the time stamp right on it."

  "Yes," Janie added, trying to sway the man. "You can see we paid the right amount. Please forgive us if we didn't know the right procedure."

  "How I know you buy ticket? Somebody else give them to you!" the conductor accused.

  "You mean somebody else who didn't validate them?" Rick challenged. "I already told you the time stamp is right there. We bought them five minutes ago. Use your eyes, man!"

  "Stolen ticket," the conductor said, shaking his head with feigned sadness. "Is fine much larger than no to validate ticket. The Carabinieri will be at our arrival in Pompeii. You want to deal with them?"

  Rick was angry. Extortion does bring that out in people. "That's a great idea! Why don't you bugger off until we get there?"

  "Rick," Janie soothed. "You're not helping. Sir? What's the fine for not validating our tickets?"

  "Twenty-five euros," he replied to her breasts. After a pause, he swiveled his gaze back to Rick and added haughtily. "Each."

  "You bloody wanker!" Rick cried, rising to his feet. He leaned over the slender Italian. As they faced off, however, somebody else rose to tower over them both. Both men stared, awestruck, at six-feet-two-inches of irate Natalie. One hand thrust to her hip—still holding the mangled, drooping sandwich that bobbed with her anger—she waggled the other in the conductor's face. His eyes widened further and further at each globule of fat dripping from the two-inch blue talon flashing before his eyes.